Sweet Cicely — or Josiah Allen as a PoliticianHolley, Marietta
Religion
Sweet Cicely — or Josiah Allen as a Politician
Holley, Marietta
Methodist Church (U.S.) -- Fiction; Temperance and religion -- Fiction; Women -- Suffrage -- Fiction
The dead shall rise. Temperance and Justice and Liberty shall rise.
They shall go forth to bless our fair land. And purified and enobled,
it shall be the best beloved, the fairest land of God beneath the sun.
Refuge of the oppressed and tempted, inspiration of the hopeless, light
of the world.
And free mothers shall clasp their free children to their hearts; and
fathers and mothers and children shall join in one heavenly strain, song
of freedom and of truth. And the nations shall listen to hear how “they
rose, they rose, they rose from the dead.”
As the tones of the sweet hymn died on the soft air, and the blessed
vision passed with it; when I come down onto my feet,--for truly, I had
been lifted up, and by the side of myself,--Cicely was standin' with her
brown eyes lookin' over the waters, holdin' the hand of the boy; and I
see every thing that the song did or could mean, in the depths of her
deep, prophetic eyes. Sad eyes, too, they was, and discouraged; for the
morning wus fur away--and--and the boy wus pullin' at her hand, eager to
get away from where he wus.
The boy led us; and we follered him up the gradual hill to the old
homestead of Washington, Mount Vernon.
Lookin' down from the broad, high porch, you can look directly down
through the trees into the river. The water calm and sort o' golden,
through the green of the trees, and every thing looked peaceful and
serene.
There are lots of interestin' things to be seen here,--the tombs of the
rest of the Washington family; the key of the Bastile, covered with the
blood and misery of a foreign land; the tree that carries us back in
memory to his grave, where he rests quietly, who disturbed the sleep of
empires and kingdoms; the furniture of Washington and his family,--the
chairs they sot in, the tables they sot at, and the rooms where
they sot; the harpiscord, that Nelly Custis and Mrs. G. Washington
harpiscorded on.
But she whose name wus once Smith longed to see somethin' else fur more.
What wus it?
It wus not the great drawin'-rooms, the guest-chambers, the halls, the
grounds, the live-stock, nor the pictures, nor the flowers.
No: it wus the old garret of the mansion, the low old garret, where she
sot, our Lady Washington, in her widowed dignity, with no other fire
only the light of deathless love that lights palace or hovel,--sot there
in the window, because she could look out from it upon the tomb of her
mighty dead.
Sot lookin' out upon the river that wus sweepin' along under sun and
moon, bearing on every wave and ripple the glory and beauty of his name.
Bearing it away from her mebby, she would sometimes sadly think, as she
thought of happy days gone by; for though souls may soar, hearts will
cling. And sometimes storms would vex the river's unquiet breast; and
mebby the waves would whisper to her lovin' heart, “Never more, never
more.”
[Illustration: THE OLD HOME OF WASHINGTON.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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